It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
How youth teach environmental educators through intergenerational learning
The researchers found a role reversal between teachers and students, as environmental educators reported improvement in teaching and leadership skills after learning from the existing knowledge and experiences of students in an environmental education program, demonstrating the impact and effectiveness of youth-to-adult intergenerational learning.
“Intergenerational learning is bidirectional learning where youth learn from adults and adults learn from youth,” McClain said. “Youth and adults can both be experts or have unique knowledge that can be shared with someone from another generation.”
The research team interviewed 27 participants, all of whom were first-time counselors, returning counselors or lead educators for the Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center Outdoor School program, an environmental education camp for upper-elementary school students.
During the interviews, educators explained how their skills, attitudes and behaviors were influenced through interactions with youth, such as learning and applying different teaching techniques to relate to individual students. Educators said they experienced an increased strength in attitudes toward environmental education and reported behavioral changes in how they engaged with youth, such as a return to childlikeness or adding playfulness to their work.
The researchers said another significant finding was that sociocultural differences between the students and educators helped catalyze youth-to-adult intergenerational learning. In the case of the Shaver's Creek program, many elementary students were from rural areas. Some educators, however, were from out-of-town, urban environments, so they reported learning from the students’ existing knowledge about the surrounding environment.
“Environmental education is rooted in place-based learning,” Powell said. “Youth become the spokespeople for the trees, plants and animals of the region and help out-of-town educators feel more comfortable in that space. Educators can then take those tidbits and teach them to future students.”
The researchers said educators can use what they learn from students and reflect on their teaching practices to become better educators, all while creating learning spaces where they can learn from youth to incorporate their ideas into future lessons.
In addition to educators, youth can also teach their parents or adult family members what they learned, which extends the impact of youth-to-adult intergenerational learning.
“Youth offer new ideas, innovative practices and diverse perspectives that can further learning,” Powell said. “These spaces give youth platforms to make an impact on lives and communities now versus having to wait until they are adults.”
This research was adapted from Powell’s master’s thesis. Danielle Frank of the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance collaborated on this research.
Broadening the scope of intergenerational learning in environmental education: an investigation of youth-to-educator intergenerational learning during a residential environmental education program
Why common climate messaging often backfires – and how to fix it
A new study finds many Americans misjudge the relative climate impact of dozens of behaviors. Interventions focused solely on personal behavior can reduce willingness to engage in collective climate action.
Climate behavior gap: Most Americans overrate the climate impact of actions like recycling and underrate high-impact choices like skipping long flights or eating less meat, a new study finds.
Spillover risk: Interventions that focus only on personal behavior can reduce willingness to engage in collective climate action, such as voting or protesting.
What works: Active learning boosts climate literacy and commitment to impactful lifestyle changes – but must be paired with strategies that also support collective action.
Many Americans misjudge which personal behaviors have the biggest impact on carbon emissions, researchers have found. But efforts to improve climate literacy that focus too narrowly on individual actions may inadvertently dampen public support for collective solutions.
The findings, published June 9 in PNAS Nexus, indicate that people tended to overestimate the climate benefits of familiar actions like recycling and switching light bulbs, while underestimating the impact of avoiding one long flight a year or eating less beef.
“People are very misinformed around how their actions can translate into actual impact in terms of reducing carbon,” said senior study author Madalina Vlasceanu, an assistant professor of environmental social sciences in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “We think, ‘I have to recycle this and it will help the planet.’ It’s less likely you will hear that if you fly less, that’s the best you can possibly do, lifestyle-wise.”
The results are based on a study of nearly 4,000 people in the U.S. recruited to participate in an online survey. Participants in an “active learning” group were asked to rate the relative effectiveness of 21 different individual-level behaviors on a sliding scale and received immediate feedback. “We compared the actions to each other – not tons of carbon. That’s something nobody understands. It’s so abstract, you’ll forget it immediately,” Vlasceanu said.
A second group of participants passively received information about the relative mitigation potential of the same behaviors without the prediction step. In the control group, participants received no information. Participants in all groups rated their commitment to the 21 individual behaviors and five additional system-level behaviors, such as voting for pro-climate candidates, as well as the ease of adopting these behaviors.
Unintended consequences
After the interventions, people in both the active learning and passive groups expressed greater commitment to high-impact lifestyle changes like eating lower-carbon meats such as poultry. “Participants found this can be really easy to do, and has one of the highest impacts that has been actually documented,” Vlasceanu said. Those who began the exercise with the greatest misperceptions showed the largest shifts in commitments.
But the interventions also produced a worrying side effect. When the content focused solely on personal behaviors, participants became less likely to commit to climate-related collective actions like voting or joining public demonstrations.
“These interventions also decreased commitment to collective action, where you’re really trying to influence some sort of policy, and this is a problem,” Vlasceanu said.
Personal vs. public action
The findings point to a persistent tension in climate communication efforts: how to encourage effective individual behavior without undermining broader societal engagement. “Now we have to go back and understand how we would better design these interventions so we don’t have those negative spillovers,” she said.
Although collective actions are harder to quantify in terms of carbon impact, one 2021 analysis estimated that a single vote in a recent national election in Canada could be more than 20 times as effective as skipping a long flight – one of the most impactful lifestyle changes scientists have evaluated.
“If you extrapolate from that, you can conclude that all the collective actions are way more effective than all the lifestyle changes you can do, although this still remains to be empirically quantified,” Vlasceanu said.
The study also highlighted a difference in what motivates people to act in their personal lives versus in public. “People will engage in lifestyle changes when they think it’s easy to do. It’s less important to them if it’s effective,” she said. “For collective action, it is more important to people that the action they engage in will actually result in a meaningful change.”
Vlasceanu and co-authors including Danielle Goldwert of New York University collected data in early 2024, with participants averaging 40 years old. Roughly half identified as Democrats, 22% as Republicans, and 26% as independent or other. “Democrats were more sensitive to incorporating what they learned into their behaviors compared to Republicans,” Vlasceanu said.
Insights about the human mind
She emphasized that the goal of the research was not advocacy but discovery. “Our job as academics is not to be activists or fight for a particular cause,” she said. “These are research questions we scientifically care about that uncover essential processes about the human mind.”
The work is part of a broader research program investigating how scalable, low-cost interventions can affect behavior. “We pick the context in which we apply these investigations such that they are societally relevant,” Vlasceanu said.
Climate change offers a unique learning opportunity, she said, because it can only be solved through choices and changes involving large numbers of people working together. “If we understand how the mind works in this context, then we can document ways in which practitioners, policymakers – people whose job it is to address this crisis – can most effectively address it,” she said.
Future experiments may compare literacy-based strategies with emotional appeals or personal storytelling to determine which approaches most effectively boost both individual and collective engagement.
“In order to meaningfully address climate change, experts have agreed that we will need lifestyle change and collective action. Both of these have to work together,” Vlasceanu said. “This is a critical part of the pathway to net zero.”
This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship awarded to Danielle Goldwert.
Climate action literacy interventions increase commitments to more effective mitigation behaviors
Article Publication Date
9-Jun-2025
New study offers detailed look at winter flooding in California’s central valley
The research used satellite imagery to identify where winter flooding occurs, which can improve flood risk awareness and inform how to best redirect floodwaters to replenish groundwater supplies.
A comparison of images from the MODIS Terra satellite taken January 1, 2023 (top) and November 19, 2022 (bottom) shows the extent of flooding following heavy rains.
California’s Central Valley — one of the nation's most critical agricultural regions and home to over 1.3 million people — is prone to flooding. Mapping the extent of winter floods has been challenging for experts, however, because clouds can obscure the view of satellites. Recent efforts to improve satellite flood mapping have been incorporated into a new study that offers insight into where winter flooding is occurring and inform how floodwaters can be used to replenish depleted aquifers.
The research, published June 4 in the Journal of Flood Risk Management, examined 20 years of satellite imagery to identify the extent and location of winter flooding in the region. The midwinter months of December through February were found to have the highest likelihood of floods, particularly when atmospheric rivers brought heavy rains when soils were already saturated. The study also identified areas where floodwaters fail to percolate through soils and offers suggestions for using the water to replenish rapidly depleting groundwater aquifers. By examining insurance claim data and overlays of floodwaters and buildings, researchers also found that flood exposure was actually higher, by value, for buildings outside of officially designated flood boundaries. The study’s findings can be visualized in three interactive maps.
“We know that atmospheric rivers and winter precipitation are big drivers of flooding, and we can see that in stream flow gauge records,” said Christine Albano, ecohydrologist at DRI and lead author of the study. “But we really had no data on how that water is dispersed across the landscape over the historical record, because cloudy winters obscure the view of Landsat imagery, which is only captured once or twice a month. By using daily MODIS imagery, we increase the odds of capturing a glimpse of the land surface. This fills an important gap in our understanding, because winter is the time when flood risks are greatest and when excess water is most available for groundwater recharge — so it is essential that we know where water is during this time of year.”
The researchers wanted to account for the extensive water management that occurs in the agricultural region, as well as the influence of atmospheric rivers. To do this, they combined the satellite imagery with precipitation and soil moisture data from upstream regions. This allowed them to identify where flooding occurs due to rainfall, rather than the intentional flooding sometimes used by water managers for purposes like flooding rice fields.
The Central Valley is known to be sinking at a rapid pace — with parts sinking over one foot per year — due to groundwater extraction. The maps offer a way to pinpoint where floodwaters exist and aren’t able to penetrate the ground surface. Most of these areas are within 5km of soils with better permeability, the study found, and floodwaters could be redirected to these locations to recharge the aquifers below. Alternatively, the compacted soils in flooding areas could be tilled to better allow water to penetrate.
“We now have the methods and information we need to support ongoing water management efforts to redirect hazardous floodwater to key locations where depleted groundwater basins can be replenished so that rural communities and ecosystems have access to water in the dry season,” said Melissa Rohde, who co-authored the study. “This is increasingly important as atmospheric river events intensify under a warming climate and local groundwater sustainability agencies work hard to achieve groundwater sustainability by 2040 under California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act”.
The tradeoff, however, is that the coarser resolution of MODIS imagery has limitations for urban areas, because the data can’t reliably distinguish between black asphalt and black water. The MODIS satellites also offer 20 years of data, rather than the 50+ years offered by LANDSAT, which means that some of the older, larger floods aren’t captured.
“We weren’t able to visualize some of the biggest floods, like in 1997,” Albano says. “But the smaller and more common floods are the ones impacting people living in the floodplains more frequently. Our maps offer a view of where the higher frequency floods are occurring.”
The research methods can be replicated for other regions in the U.S. to identify flood risk and groundwater replenishment potential. In the future, Albano would like to utilize even newer satellites like the Sentinel constellation, which provide higher resolution, but which don’t yet offer more than a few years of data.
"By integrating Sentinel 1 and Sentinel 2 imagery with Landsat and MODIS data, we can create very dense map stacks of inundation information,” said Chris Soulard of the USGS, who co-authored the study. “Sentinel 1's radar technology allows for all-weather monitoring, while Sentinel 2's optical imagery provides high-resolution insights into surface conditions. This combination of freely available image collections enables us to create a comprehensive and timely record of flooding events."
More information: The full study, Assessing causes and consequences of winter surface water dynamics in California’s Central Valley using satellite remote sensing, is available from the Journal of Flood Risk Management at https://doi.org/10.1111/jfr3.70080
Study authors include: Christine Albano (DRI), Christopher E. Soulard (USGS), Blake Minor (DRI), Jessica Walker (USGS), Britt W. Smith (USGS), Eric K. Waller (USGS), Michael D. Bartles (USACE), Thomas W. Corringham (UCSD), Anthony T. O’Geen (UC Davis), Melissa M. Rohde (Rohde Environmental Consulting/SUNY), Anne M. Wein (USGS)
About DRI
We are Nevada’s non-profit research institute, founded in 1959 to empower experts to focus on science that matters. We work with communities across the state — and the world — to address their most pressing scientific questions. We’re proud that our scientists continuously produce solutions that better human and environmental health.
Scientists at DRI are encouraged to follow their research interests across the traditional boundaries of scientific fields, collaborating across DRI and with scientists worldwide. All faculty support their own research through grants, bringing in nearly $5 to the Nevada economy for every $1 of state funds received. With more than 600 scientists, engineers, students, and staff across our Reno and Las Vegas campuses, we conducted more than $52 million in sponsored research focused on improving peoples’ lives in 2024 alone.
At DRI, science isn’t merely academic — it’s the key to future-proofing our communities and building a better world. For more information, please visit www.dri.edu.
From left to right, Kea-Tiong (Samuel) Tang, IEEE CASS vice president; Joseph Cavallaro; Xinghe (Mark) Chen; Brendan Hlibok; Wendy Tan; Ali Nik-Ahd (on phone); Didi Zhou; and An-Yeu (Andy) Wu, IEEE CASS president-elect.
Rice University student engineers have earned top international honors for a novel device that could redefine how humans interact with virtual environments. Their project, a wearable haptic wristband, claimed first place in the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) Student Design Competition held in London May 27.
The team, known as WRIST (short for Wearable Radial Interface for Sensory hapTic feedback),includes students from mechanical engineering and electrical and computer engineering. Their winning device is a lightweight, modular bracelet capable of delivering two distinct forms of tactile feedback: a dynamic squeeze around the wrist and precise vibrations from multiple contact points. The system aims to make virtual reality (VR) and human-computer interaction more immersive, intuitive and accessible.
“We wanted to build something that could deliver high-quality haptic feedback without being bulky or cost-prohibitive,” team member Xinghe (Mark) Chen said. “There are some great commercial devices out there, but many are expensive, hard to repair and limited in their feedback capabilities. We saw an opportunity to do better.”
What sets WRIST apart is its innovative integration of multiple feedback modalities — radial squeeze and vibrotactile stimulation — in a form factor that’s compact, low-cost and user-friendly. At its core is a powerful DC motor connected to a radial spooling mechanism that tightens a soft, flexible band around the wrist, simulating the sensation of a squeeze. Simultaneously, five linear resonant actuators positioned evenly around the wristband provide finely controlled vibrations to simulate taps, pulses or dynamic movement cues.
The device’s motor can generate a force of 10 newtons in just 0.1 seconds and reach 15 newtons within 0.3 seconds — fast enough to convincingly simulate pressure changes in response to real-time actions in a virtual space.
“We spent a lot of time optimizing the motor and the gearbox combination,” team member Brendan Hlibok said. “By using a custom DC motor with a planetary gearbox and encoder-based feedback control, we achieved high torque, fast response time and repeatable actuation without inflating the cost.”
Unlike many existing haptic devices that are limited to a single form of feedback or require bulky external components, WRIST is entirely self-contained. All electronics — including a custom-printed circuit board, motor controller, power regulators and communication interfaces — are housed inside the bracelet itself. The device is powered and controlled by a laptop via a single USB-C cable, making it highly portable and easy to integrate into different environments.
The flexible band, made from biocompatible thermoplastic polyurethane, accommodates a wide range of wrist sizes while remaining comfortable for extended wear. Embedded wires stretch and relax with the band, allowing continuous electrical connection without compromising durability or comfort.
“The modularity of the design was really important to us,” team member Wendy Tan said. “Every piece of the WRIST device, from the vibrotactor housing to the motor mount, can be 3D printed or sourced using common lab tools. That makes it not just easier to build and repair but more accessible for research labs or classrooms that don’t have big budgets.”
To demonstrate WRIST’s potential in action, the team created custom interactive environments in Unity, a popular game engine used in VR development. In one simulation, users can press a virtual button and feel a corresponding squeeze or vibration. In another, drawing back a virtual bowstring triggers increasing pressure around the wrist, simulating the tension of archery in real time.
“Adding squeeze feedback opens up a whole new channel of communication between the machine and the user,” team member Didi Zhou said. “It can be used for training, for accessibility or even just to make games more immersive. And because our device supports open-source integration, researchers can use it right out of the box.”
The WRIST team also includes Ali Nik-Ahd and Nathan Morriss. Four of the six students traveled to London to present their project, where they stood out among competitors from universities around the world. Their win reflects not just technical excellence but also effective communication and design thinking.
The team was nominated for the competition by Joseph Cavallaro, chair of the IEEE CASS Houston chapter and a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice.
“This team really impressed me,” Cavallaro said. “They addressed key challenges in haptic technology — cost, form factor, multimodality — and built something elegant and impactful. It’s a powerful demonstration of what undergraduates can achieve with the right vision and mentorship.”
The device was created at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) and won the OEDK Staff Favorite Award at the 2025 Huff OEDK Engineering Design Showcase. The students received guidance and mentorship from several Rice faculty, including Gary Woods, distinguished professor in the practice of electrical and computer and engineering; David Trevas, lecturer in mechanical engineering; Marcia O’Malley, chair of mechanical engineering; and Elyse Chase, faculty fellow in mechanical engineering. Tracy Volz, director of Rice’s Activate Engineering Communication Program, helped the team refine their presentation and poster ahead of the competition.
How home addresses may predict health consequences of roach, rodent exposure
A new study linked medical records and geospatial neighborhood and housing data among children with asthma and found that those who lived in homes with more roaches and rodents had worse lung function
Boston University School of Public Health
Indoor allergens such as cockroaches, dust, and mold are known to contribute to a range of health complications, including childhood asthma, which is the leading pediatric chronic disease in the United States and one that disproportionately affects Black and Latino children. But these triggers are often difficult for doctors to pinpoint and treat without detailed knowledge of patients’ specific living conditions and environmental exposures.
A new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researchers suggests that it is possible to predict whether children with asthma are exposed to certain allergens simply based on where they live—and whether this exposure may be exacerbating their respiratory issues.
Published in the journal Annals of Epidemiology, the study used a novel modeling method to link electronic health records containing data on in-home environmental exposures to housing and neighborhood location data for children with asthma living in low-income households. Children living in homes with greater chances of having cockroaches and rodents had worse lung function.
“With existing medical record information, doctors could predict if a patient might be exposed to mouse and roach allergens at home,” says study co-corresponding and senior author Dr. Patricia Fabian, associate professor of environmental health at BUSPH and associate director at BU Institute for Global Sustainability. “This information can be used to address home risk factors and improve asthma control, in addition to other strategies such as medication. It can also help children without asthma, since these allergens are implicated in the development of asthma as well as exacerbations.”
As the majority of the children in the study were Black and lived in historically segregated neighborhoods, these findings highlight the consequences of longstanding racial inequities in housing characteristics and quality, borne by structural racism. Discriminatory policies such as redlining resulted in broad disinvestment in housing for Black families and other racial minorities, decreasing their home quality and stability, as well as neighborhood resources—all of which can lead to environments where roaches and other pests can thrive in greater quantities. Black children are twice as likely to develop asthma than White children, and their mortality rate from asthma is nearly eight times higher than White children.
While some studies have suggested that childhood exposure to indoor allergens may help prevent children from developing asthma, other data indicate that this exposure exacerbates this condition in children. Many animal-related allergens, in particular, are known triggers for asthma attacks, Dr. Fabian says.
“In the case of roaches, allergens are in their droppings and body parts, and for mice, allergens are in their urine and saliva,” she says. “These allergens are small and can become airborne, easily reaching the respiratory system and triggering asthma attacks.”
The findings build upon a 2022 study in Annals of Epidemiology in which the authors first developed these prediction models for the presence of in-home asthma triggers among children with asthma, using machine learning methods, EHR data, and publicly available geospatial data matched to patients’ addresses at Boston Medical Center (BMC), the largest safety-net hospital in the Northeast. For the newest study, the researchers applied these models and linked this information to lung function test data from EHRs for 1,070 children with asthma at BMC.
“These studies were a proof of concept that we could analyze child lung function at the level of individual homes without going into homes to measure levels of allergens,” says study co-corresponding author Dr. Matthew Bozigar, assistant professor of epidemiology at Oregon State University. “We combined granular data with advanced methods to account for error—such as estimating if a home likely had cockroaches—and linked these exposures with clinical lung function metrics.”
Rather than documenting asthma disparities, they focused on parcel-level housing factors linked to poor lung function within an already-affected population, he says. “We followed recent scholarship in identifying structural drivers of disparities, avoiding the use of race as a proxy for systemic racism.”
The authors emphasize that this methodology may also be utilized to provide valuable insight about other disparities, populations, and adverse health outcomes.
“Every hospital and clinic collects electronic health records for their patients, which means this approach is scalable to most populations in the world, as long as records are kept consistently,” Dr. Fabian says. “New advances in satellite, housing and environmental data collection are expanding our ability to connect health data to geospatial data worldwide, as well. Any health outcome that is connected to risk factors related to housing can be studied using similar methods.”
Coauthors include Catherine Connolly, postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health at the time of the study; Kimberly Vermeer, founder and president of Urban Habitat Initiatives; Luis Carvalho, associate professor of mathematics and statistics at BU College of Arts & Sciences; Robyn Cohen, pediatric pulmonologist and director of BMC’s Pediatric Pulmonary & Allergy Clinic; Julianne Dugas, an analyst at SPH’s Biostatistics and Epidemiology Data Analytics Center at the time of the study; and Jonathan Levy, chair and professor of environmental health at SPH. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
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About Boston University School of Public Health
Founded in 1976, Boston University School of Public Health is one of the top ten ranked schools of public health in the world. It offers master's- and doctoral-level education in public health. The faculty in six departments conduct policy-changing public health research around the world, with the mission of improving the health of populations—especially the disadvantaged, underserved, and vulnerable—locally and globally.
Associations between in-home environmental exposures and lung function in a safety net population of children with asthma using electronic health records and geospatial data
